Ahh, audiophiles

gga

I’ve always enjoyed audiophiles; it’s pretty hard to find a
single group with so much rich potential for mockery. But,
through all my laughter at their talk of high quality digital cables
(they haven’t heard of error correction perhaps?); through all
the sniggering over their detailed discussions about bit rates when
the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem is a mystery unto them (What? Perhaps the CD sound frequency of 44.1kHz being
approximately twice the typical highest human-audible frequency is
a coincidence?)

Anyway, for all that I’ve always just thought it was funny: Ahh,
aren’t they cute? No knowledge of information theory at all, but here
they are arguing about transmitting bits. Still cute though. Just a geeky hobby, kind of like theology. Theologians and audiophiles arguing about things that aren’t really
going to have any effect on their lives, that they don’t understand,
and in the end are all indistinguishable.

And I’ve always assumed that on some level audiophiles knew just how
ridiculous they were. They’d never admit it, but there was always
something in there that would prevent them from doing something really
stupid. But, no!